Monday, March 01, 2004

1921 Ballot

Here goes . . . 2 electees this year, and every year except 1923 between now and 1930. This is the beginning of a run where we’re going to do some of our most important work, I urge everyone to take another look at everything just to be sure.

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What's interesting to me about the future breakdown is how it corresponds to my personal HoM ballot. 3-6 (Johnson, Keeler, Kelley and Wallace), I absolutely think belong. 7-8 (Grant and Sheckard) I'm not as certain but I'm pretty sure. Then Jennings at 9, who's even iffier but I guess I can live with, and Caruthers at 10, who I'd have to think about a LOT. I can't be sure where I'll slot the new candidates, of course, but it's going to be fun, in that incredibly frustrating how-do-I-pick-these-guys-apart kind of way.

Brian, I'd be surprised if there are any "rigid systems" out there and I'd be surprised if anybody is "winging it," though those are two valid extremes on a continuum of voting styles. I'd guess everybody is somewhere in between. My "system" is analogous to Bill James'. I.e. I develop a list based on a set of numbers and then I vary from the formal list based on the stuff in my "bullshirt dump." But the "rigid list" serves as a consideration set--e.g. my #1 player on my ballot has to be in the top 3 of the numerical list, etc. I can't just dip down to #10. However, players like Pearce and Wright and half of Pike and most of the Negro Leaguers, well, no, they float with no numerical anchors.

As an unofficial tallier, I say a hard and fast deadline of 5:00 p.m. West Coast time on Monday evening, so that by Tuesday everyone knows. The unofficial talliers should be able to post results up in any election where the difference between the electee and the runner up is greater than 25 points, like this one, when my tally shows Jimmy Collins with 814 points, Charlie Bennett with 701, and also-ran Joe McGinnity with 659.

Joe presumably meant EST not West Coast, since he's located in suburban Va. (I think.) If his time to look at it is 6-8pm EST, the polls should have closed already. It doesn't matter, but I agree we should be clear.

Not counting Lennox, I had 702 for Bennett and 662 for McG. Ron and Sean's counts actually agree--701 w/o and 724 with Lennox' ballot. I also had 813 for Collins. Assuming I am (again) one off, then I would say that Ron seems to have it right.

BTW, after 46 ballots it was 664-662 on my scorecard. Who knew there would be 3 more ballots and how they would vote (61-0 for Bennett over Joe, counting Lennox).

All right, Brad. Here's what I have. This is with 48 ballots: Max Parkinson counts but Lennox HC does not count. However, Lennox HC, with a score of +17, takes over the title of the voter in the greatest agreement with the consensus as measured by the vote totals, ahead of ed (+15) and Al Peterson (+14).

As a hint at what each voter's style is, here is a list. Behind each voter's name I've put 6 names. The first three are the three highest-ranking (by vote total) players who did not make that voter's top 15. The last three are the three lowest-ranking players who did make that voter's top 15.

I just want to acknowledge my soul-mates. jimd and Max Parkinson excluded the same three players I did: McG, Waddell and Bresnahan. Nobody included the same three nor even two of the same three, but karl, Sean Gilman, Rick A., Mark McK., Esteban R., Philip and Max (again) caught the same theme which was including 3 19th century guys. Max's ballot was close to mine on both dimensions, plus he had at least one of the same 19th century guys (Ed Williamson), so Max, you're my guy.

Van Haltren is 18, not 16. You left off Duffy (14), Pearce (16), and Ryan (17) before Van Haltren. At +12, you're definitely one of the people whose agreement with the consensus is high. There are quite a few others in that neighborhood.

I wonder how much difference a 1) Matty, 2) Nap ballot will make in dissimilarity scores?

I think Brown is the key.

I may or may not run it next year - whim of the moment. Matty and Nap will get the great majority of the "elect me" votes, and the difference between 24 and 23 points is quite trivial. I also expect that a clear majority will have Three-Finger on the ballot somewhere, and as long as he's between #3 and #15, he won't be contributing all that much to dissimilarity from the consensus. It's likely that everyone's similarity to the consensus score will be higher next year, and that highest possible score will also be higher next year. (This year, the highest possible score was about +22.)

That is, 13 of the consensus top 15 are on his own 15-place ballot, eh?

That's exactly what it means, only I just discovered he's not alone - I should have similarly marked RMc, whose 3rd highest excluded (Ryan) is below two of his three lowest included (Pearce and Pike). RMc's 15 votes all came from the top 18 candidates, which is the tightest clustering of anyone. RMc's similarity-to-consensus score is "only" +10 because the relative ordering of the 15 he did vote for was somewhat different than the final total. He gave his "elect me" bonuses to Caruthers and Johnson. That's still 13 of the consensus top 15 on his ballot.

There were five voters who had 12 of the final top 15 on their ballots: Sean M., Sean Gilman, Al Peterson, favre, and Lennox HC.